61–70 of 116 posts
While I'm as angry as anyone about the way that districts have been gerrymandered in the US, it also bugs me when I see critiques about gerrymandering that try to provoke outrage by showing the shapes of the districts and implying that districts should be square or otherwise simplistically shaped when viewed aerially. Humans don't fly, so the aerial view seems irrelevant and disingenuous to me. It reminds me somewhat…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
"proportional representation" is a generic term for a wide variety of possible representational systems. And each system has their own advantages and disadvantages. Those that get rid of districts entirely lose the ability for specific sub-regions of a state to have their own dedicated representative to vouch for their specific needs. This matters less in small states and countries, but can mean quite a lot in very l…
> Those that get rid of districts entirely lose the ability for specific sub-regions of a state to have their own dedicated representative to vouch for their specific needs. This matters less in small states and countries, but can mean quite a lot in very large states. The solution to that, however politically difficult, is to break the larger states into smaller ones. New York City, for example, shares very little p…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
We shouldn't have to go through one of the 2 major parties to contend as a third party candidate. One way to solve this could be putting caps on campaign financing which would level the playing field for smaller 3rd parties. But that would never happen because the major 2 parties make the rules and that would hurt their dominance. By voting for either party we are essentially enabling the either-or system to continue
>By voting for either party we are essentially enabling the either-or system to continue I used to agree, but the parties have no ideology attached to them. Their names are just generic terms regarding democracy and you can see how much their platforms have changed and moved over the last century. At this point they are just the Urban and Rural divisions of our election playoff. They are just the ideology of the peop…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
We shouldn't have to go through one of the 2 major parties to contend as a third party candidate. One way to solve this could be putting caps on campaign financing which would level the playing field for smaller 3rd parties. But that would never happen because the major 2 parties make the rules and that would hurt their dominance. By voting for either party we are essentially enabling the either-or system to continue
>By voting for either party we are essentially enabling the either-or system to continue I used to agree, but the parties have no ideology attached to them. Their names are just generic terms regarding democracy and you can see how much their platforms have changed and moved over the last century. At this point they are just the Urban and Rural divisions of our election playoff. They are just the ideology of the peop…
That statement is simply incorrect. Both parties have a clear ideology that ebbs and flows for the sake of remaining in power
> If you change the candidates of the party, you have changed the ideology of the party.
That is also incorrect. The 2 parties may slightly adjust their ideology for the sake of power but the core of their ideology remains the same.
1. decide how many congresspeople there should be
2. allow anyone to run
3. allow anyone to vote for anyone
4. once someone has #voters/#congresspeople, they become a congressperson
5. no one else can vote for that person
So, you're not actually competing against another person. You're competing get enough people to say "this person represents me".
Districting has time and time again proven to be a cat and mouse endeavor. Someone is always going to be able to create models to game the system one way or another. The real solution is abandoning districting for proportional representation like a true democracy. This Vox opinion piece is a great explainer, https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/10/11/16453512/...
The root cause is Duverger's Law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duverger%27s_law TL;DR: With FPTP, each belligerent tries to form the smallest winning coalition, resulting in a near even split two-party system. Proportional Representation is the remedy for assemblies, councils, houses. Approval voting is the remedy for executive races (eg sheriff, mayor, governor). Additional benefits of both PR and Approval Voting: -…
You may think for various reasons that it's better to form coalitions at one level of the voting process than the other, but let's not pretend PR avoids it.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
"proportional representation" is a generic term for a wide variety of possible representational systems. And each system has their own advantages and disadvantages. Those that get rid of districts entirely lose the ability for specific sub-regions of a state to have their own dedicated representative to vouch for their specific needs. This matters less in small states and countries, but can mean quite a lot in very l…
> Those that get rid of districts entirely lose the ability for specific sub-regions of a state to have their own dedicated representative to vouch for their specific needs. This matters less in small states and countries, but can mean quite a lot in very large states. The solution to that, however politically difficult, is to break the larger states into smaller ones. New York City, for example, shares very little p…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
"proportional representation" is a generic term for a wide variety of possible representational systems. And each system has their own advantages and disadvantages. Those that get rid of districts entirely lose the ability for specific sub-regions of a state to have their own dedicated representative to vouch for their specific needs. This matters less in small states and countries, but can mean quite a lot in very l…
> Those that get rid of districts entirely lose the ability for specific sub-regions of a state to have their own dedicated representative to vouch for their specific needs. It's doubtful whether that still exists as anything more than a foil/justification though, given Congress's expansion was stopped a century back, and each Representatives now stands in for at least half a million people (RH has the lowest number…
Here's an idea: 1. decide how many congresspeople there should be 2. allow anyone to run 3. allow anyone to vote for anyone 4. once someone has #voters/#congresspeople, they become a congressperson 5. no one else can vote for that person So, you're not actually competing against another person. You're competing get enough people to say "this person represents me".
First, in order to make the lockout in #5 work it would seem that the votes need to be tallied in real time as they are cast.
This could be addressed in a couple of ways.
(A) Allow votes of the form:
Vote for candidate C1
If C1 is locked out, vote for C2
If C2 is locked out, vote for C3
...
(B) Instead of a lockout, allow a candidate to receive more votes than the #voters/#congresspeople threshold. Each voter starts with a weighted vote with weight 1, and provides a list of alternative candidates similar to from (A).
If C1 gets a total weighted vote above the election threshold, choose t such that if each voters weight is multiplied by t the total for C1 will exactly equal the threshold.
For each C1 voter, split their vote giving t of it to C1, and 1-t of it to their C2.
Iterate through this until it converges. (I think it must converge, but offhand do not have a proof).
Second, you need to know the number of voters in advance to set the threshold. Note that you need the actual number of people who will vote, not just the number of eligible voters, because if you use the later you will be setting the threshold too high.
Third, if the number of people running is large, it is quite possible nobody reaches the election threshold. You need a procedure to whittle down the number of candidates.